A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a parliament.

In many countries the

term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a unique
title, such as senate, and thus also have unique titles for its members, such as senators.
Members of parliament tend to form parliamentary parties with members of the same political
party. The term Member of Parliament is often shortened in the media and in every day use to the
initialism "MP".
Member of Parliament can be used to translate the term used to describe representatives in other
parliamentary democracies that do not follow the Westminster system, who are usually referred to
in a different fashion such as Deputé in France, Diputado, Deputado in Portugal and Brazil,
Mitglied des Bundestages (MdB) in Germany. However, better translations are often possible.
Germany

In Germany, Member of Parliament refers to the elected members of the federal Bundestag
Parliament at the Reichstag building in Berlin. In German a member is called Mitglied des
Bundestages (Member of the Federal Diet) or officially Mitglied des Deutschen Bundestages
(Member of the German Federal Diet), abbreviated MdB.[13]

The 16 federal States of Germany (Länder) are represented by the Bundesrat at the former
Prussian House of Lords, whose members are representatives of the respective Länder's
governments and not directly elected by the people. In accordance with article 38 of the Basic
Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, which is the German constitution, "[m]embers of the
German Bundestag shall be elected in general, direct, free, equal, and secret elections. They
shall be representatives of the whole people, not bound by orders or instructions, and responsible
only to their conscience."

Elections in Germany
German elections since 1949
The German political system

Germany elects on federal level a legislature. The parliament has one chamber; the Bundesrat, or
Federal Council, represents the regions, is not considered a chamber, and its members are not
elected. The Federal Diet (Bundestag) nominally has 598 members, elected for a four year term,
299 members elected in single-seat constituencies according to first-past-the-post, while a further
299 members are allocated from statewide party lists to achieve a proportional distribution in the
legislature, conducted according to a system of proportional representation called the Mixed
member proportional representation system. Voters vote once for a constituency representative,
and a second time for a party, and the lists are used to make the party balances match the
distribution of second votes. In the parliament elected in 2009 there are 24 overhang seats, giving
a total of 622. This is caused by larger parties winning additional single-member districts above
the totals determined by their proportional party vote.

Germany has a multi-party system, with two strong parties and some other third parties that are
electorally successful. Since 1990 five parties (CDU and CSU counted as one) have been
represented in the Bundestag.

Elections are conducted approximately every 4 years, resulting from the constitutional
requirement for elections to be held 46 to 48 months after the assembly of the Federal Diet.[1]
The exact date of the election is chosen by the President[2] and must be a Sunday or public
holiday. Should the Bundestag be dismissed before the four year period has ended, elections
must be held within 60 days.

German nationals over the age of 18 who have resided for at least 3 months in Germany are
eligible to vote. Eligibility for candidacy is essentially the same as eligibility to vote.

German elections 1871 to 1945

From the unification of Germany under Emperor Wilhelm I in 1871 to the Nazi accession to power
and the abolition of elections following the Enabling Act of 1933, elections were held to the
German Reichstag or "Imperial Assembly", which supplanted its namesake, the Reichstag of the
Norddeutscher Bund. The Reichstag could be dissolved by the Kaiser, and after the abdication of
Wilhelm II in 1918 by the Reichspräsident. With the Weimar constitution of 1919, the voting
system changed from single-member constituencies to proportional representation. Election age
was reduced to 20 years. Women's suffrage had already been established by a new electoral law
in 1918, following the November revolution of that year.

Elections in Nazi Germany

The 9th German election in 1933 was the last free election. In the Third Reich, several elections
were conducted, leading to unanimous support of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) and their politicians,
because other parties were dissolved or banned.